The Infinite Onion

by Alice Archer

  I had a sudden memory of a dinner at Mitch and Sonya’s house in Seattle, when Laura and I had flown up for a weekend. Sonya had hosted with terrifying capability. We’d sat around the dining table for hours, for conversation and delicious food. Laura, Mitch, Sonya, and Kai’s older brother, Joel, were all loud, social, outspoken, and aggressive. The air had rung with good-natured debate, shouts of laughter, sharp questions, opinionated answers, jokes, and barbs. Five-year-old Kai and I, the only quiet people at the table, had eyed each other until after dessert, when Kai had crawled into my lap without a word. I’d held him loosely, rested my chin on his head. No one seemed to notice us, and I’d felt Kai slowly relax. Eventually, he snuggled back into me and pulled on my forearms until I understood he wanted to be wrapped up and held close, as if he’d found safe harbor in the storm of his rambunctious family and wanted more.

  I spent a few minutes mulling over the possibility of Mitch or Sonya—or Joel, for that matter—doing anything inappropriate to Kai. I really didn’t think they would. It seemed more likely that Kai’s life with the aliens he called family stressed him out, and he didn’t know how to ask them for help.

  I had so little to go on. It had been years since I’d last spent time around Kai. Since then, his aunt and I had divorced. Bless the boy for still liking me.

  I checked my phone—forty percent charged—and willed it to hurry up. I wasn’t sure how long Oliver’s errands would take and I didn’t want to bungle my first day on the job by returning the van late.

  I grinned to myself. I had a job.

  Well, sort of.

  While I waited, I checked my emails. I had one, from the copy shop, asking where to mail my final paycheck, since I hadn’t picked it up. I’d totally forgotten. Way to be financially responsible. The check wouldn’t be much, but it would be enough to add a few more calories to my meals.

  I yanked the charger out of the wall and drove the few blocks to the post office.

  “Sure.” The man behind the counter nodded. “We can hold mail for you, as long as it’s addressed with your name and the words General Delivery.”

  In the post office parking lot, I sent an email to the copy shop. I’d stop by the post office to get my check the next time I ran errands for Oliver.

  I honked the horn to celebrate the bounty of grocery money for a summer on Vashon. A dog in the next car over barked at me for disturbing his nap. I barked back.

  Across Vashon Highway, the big grocery store took up most of the town’s mini-mall. I parked and checked Oliver’s list. Hardware store first, groceries last.

  An hour later, I shuffled forward in the grocery store checkout line with a full cart and idly scanned the array of items designed to tempt shoppers as we waited in line.

  A small box of scrolls snagged my attention.

  Start Your Day the Zodiac Way.

  They hadn’t yet put out the July box. I poked a finger through the few remaining June scrolls. I may have had a creative idea or two in June—like proposing a trade to Oliver—but I remained convinced trying to be creative would result in more harm than good. Not everyone had the capacity for it. Writing in a journal and doing self-portraits for Oliver weren’t creative acts but menial tasks required to earn the basic necessities and survive. Story of my life.

  The line at the checkout moved forward.

  “You’re up,” the woman behind me said. She almost nudged my ass with her cart.

  “Hang on,” I told her.

  One. There was one Cancer scroll left for June.

  I bought it. Without removing the paper clasp, I tucked the scroll in my front pocket to serve as a homeopathic treatment, a minute dose of the unwanted to make me stronger.

  I almost drove off without remembering to get a journal.

  I chucked the groceries in the van, checked the time, and jogged across the parking lot to Easel & Desk, the art and office supplies shop tucked between the hardware and grocery stores.

  It didn’t take long to find the section of blank books. A hardbound book cost more but would be more durable than a spiral notebook. I found one that fit in my back pocket. If I had to write a page a day, I wanted it to be a damn small page. I studied the pens on offer and a rack of Sharpies caught my eye. Heh. That sucker would fill a page fast.

  The older man at the counter narrowed his eyes at me. He probably didn’t get many customers who chuckled over their office supplies.

  By the time I got back to the van, I couldn’t wait to do my daily journal page. I had about five minutes before I needed to leave. No problem.

  I dug around in my groceries to find the box of cheap saltines I’d bought to crunch on when I felt hungry after I’d used up my food ration for the day, ripped off a flap of cardboard, and slid it behind the first page in the journal. For a few seconds I tapped the steering wheel and thought. With another chuckle, I turned the book sideways, uncapped the Sharpie, and wrote HA HA in capital letters to fill the page, pleased with myself for gaming the system.

  And that was my journaling done for day one.

  When I dug in my front pocket for the van key, I felt the zodiac scroll and tried to convince myself gaming the system wasn’t the same as being creative.

  Perspective shift.

  I couldn’t tell if the shift was a break or a mend.

  The zodiac scroll had gotten me fired. On the other hand, getting fired had led me to Vashon and spending five weeks outside in the woods.

  My unfocused gaze sharpened on the grocery store entrance. I grabbed the key from the ignition and ran back to the store to buy a box of expensive, double-sealing Zip-loc plastic bags.

  Working quickly in the van, I dropped the scroll into one of the bags, sealed it, and shoved it into my pocket. The plastic made my thigh sweat, but it was worth it. I needed my frenemy the scroll to survive my terrible camping skills until I figured out what it all meant.

  On the way back to Oliver’s house, I watched the scenery pass and didn’t think about rules I lived by. Or the fact that I hadn’t asked for job-hunting help at the library.

  Chapter 31

  Oliver

  The day after Grant took the van to town, I finished the drawing for the mural and hit a snag. Paper was easy to roll and hide if Grant came around, but I couldn’t hide a mural.

  When I imagined painting my vision onto the great room wall, my face heated and my heart sped up, like the start of a panic attack. I couldn’t do it. Grant would read too much into the subject matter. Even if I painted on canvas in the great room, moving a wet painting at a moment’s notice would be too risky. Oil paint had a lot going for it when it came to color depth and luminosity, but it took weeks to dry.

  The house originally had two bedrooms—Dad’s and the one I shared with Granddad, but after Dad died, I’d converted his bedroom into a library, a room too nice to paint in. Which meant I’d have to work in my bedroom if I wanted privacy.

  I rummaged through a storage cabinet in the art corner of the great room. Dad had stocked up on panels for a show he’d done in Toronto, and I thought I remembered a surplus. I found three, backed by wood frames to prevent warping. They could be hung flush against one another to create a nine-foot-wide painting.

  I lugged the panels to the side porch and spent most of the morning sanding and applying nontoxic sealant. While the final coat dried, I moved two heavy lights on stands and a large floor fan into my bedroom. My painting methods didn’t produce toxic fumes, but the fans and lights would speed the drying time.

  The thought of trying to sleep in a room with a painting of Grant… No. Better to save that thought for… never.

  Great. I’d booted myself out of my own bedroom.

  I sighed and took stock of my new private studio. If I hung the panels on the wall beside the bedroom door, they wouldn’t be visible from the great room as I went in and out the door.

 
I relocated a dresser and a club chair, and clipped a canvas tarp to the gallery rail just below the ceiling. The tarp covered the wall and a couple feet of floor. I spread another tarp on the floor between the wall and the bed, and wrapped a tarp around the bed—the bed Freddie and I hadn’t used since he’d been back, and wouldn’t before he left again. That would be problematic, but I didn’t want to explain the mural to Freddie. I couldn’t even explain it to myself. I’d have to paint it to understand it.

  I kept saying mural in my mind, but it wouldn’t be a mural if I didn’t paint directly onto a wall. I decided I didn’t care. My problem with the project wasn’t semantics but secrets. I’d never hidden my art or my creative process. When I needed to focus without interruption or lose myself in the thrill of creation, I put up the red flag.

  What I was doing with the mural was different. I didn’t want to share even the existence of the painting. I already regretted letting Freddie see my drawings.

  I was going to hide it.

  It took the better part of an hour to move the panels from the side porch to the bedroom and affix them to the wall over the canvas so they wouldn’t shift as I painted.

  Using Dad’s formula, I mixed and applied four layers of white ground to the panels, to achieve a smooth surface for the detailed realism I wanted to paint. The fan dried the ground in record time. Before I applied each new coat, I smoothed the dried surface with a sanding block in each hand—an old habit begun as an impatient child who couldn’t wait to start painting.

  While the ground layers dried, I moved paint supplies from the art corner to the bedroom.

  Hours later, after I’d sanded the last layer of ground and wiped it clean, I sat on the end of the bed to think. The next step—transferring the drawing to the panels—would be a commitment of sorts, and it made me pause.

  I turned to stare at the panels.

  They stared back, their stark whiteness a question.

  Hunger scrambled my thoughts, allowed the bigger questions to slip through.

  With the exception of Dad dying too early, my life at thirty-five was the ideal life I’d fantasized about as a kid, the only life I’d ever wanted.

  Consider what’s missing, the panels seemed to say.

  I knew what was missing: Granddad, Dad, Aza. My mother was missing too, but she’d left so long ago I almost didn’t remember her.

  In my imagination, one of the panels winked at me, as if we shared a joke.

  “Are you saying a man is what’s missing?” I spoke out loud, like a lonely recluse who discussed his life with animated art supplies, which maybe I was.

  You’re going to paint a man, the panel pointed out.

  “I’ve painted men before, even men I’ve been sexually attracted to.”

  You never tried to hide those paintings.

  The panels and I stared at one another. After a while, they seemed to smirk.

  “I get it,” I snapped. “Yes, Grant and Kai are placeholders for a family of my own. But I don’t want them specifically. Kai belongs to someone else, and Grant is… too invasive and broken and pissed off.” I pointed at my rolled-up drawing in the corner. “But that’s the image that seared into my brain, while Grant was asleep, before I even met him. He’s only the Ophelia stand-in for my riff on Millais’s painting.”

  Make up your mind. Is Grant a stand-in for Ophelia or for a family of your—

  “Shut up. No. You’re missing the point. Ophelia is about… Millais’s scenery, that almost supernatural intensity of vegetation. The man in my painting is… a placeholder for a man who… could hold a child that tenderly.”

  You’re so confused.

  I sighed and flopped back on the bed to stare at the ceiling.

  For years I’d been on standby with Freddie, letting him call the shots in our arrangement of spontaneous convenience. Maybe it was time to push.

  I reach over to pick my phone off the bedside table, curious to see if I could tempt Freddie to come back from Whidbey sooner than later.

  “I think the man in the mural should be Freddie,” I told the panels.

  Chapter 32

  Grant

  On Friday afternoon, at the end of my first week of working for Oliver, I returned to my campsite after a hike, dumped a big can of beef stew into the cook pot, and set my one-burner camp stove on low. While I waited for the stew to heat, I munched on a carrot.

  With better food at the campsite since my trip to town in Oliver’s van, and with my final paycheck from the copy center on the way, I’d stopped being a tent potato to conserve energy. As amazing as my hikes were, they hadn’t improved my mood. I couldn’t stop mulling over Mitch, Kai, my failed marriage, my parents and their rules, and Oliver’s assignments long enough to strategize about work.

  I could eliminate one of those distractions by completing my assignments for the week. The trip to town had taken care of most of the required hours of labor. Work on the hedge would be easy and take care of the rest. That left a self-portrait and the daily journal entries.

  I set the timer on my phone for five minutes, to give myself a hard limit on the self-portrait. My art supplies consisted of a pencil, a Sharpie, and my journal. Everything else in my world was dirt, leaves, and the damned sharp rocks under the tent I could never seem to…

  Three minutes later, I took a photo of a mixed media creation I’d decided to call Self-Portrait with Sticks and Stones. From a standing position, I aimed the camera down at my arrangement of rocks, twigs, moss, and leaves. On a whim, I included the tip of my boot in the frame. I’d show it to Oliver when I went to do the hedge.

  The day’s journal entry required most of a carrot. I chewed and contemplated, then took my time filling a page with the word TREES.

  I finished before the stew was ready. Crappy canned stew, warmed in my crappy pot on my crappy camp stove. I made a racket with the spoon against the pot as I stirred, resentful of the eight minutes I’d spent on Oliver’s assignment while he lounged in his big house with the kitchen and the running water, playing lord of the manor.

  To calm down, I took a pre-lunch jog around campsite. Stomped the ground. Punched my fists in the air. I felt ridiculous, but I needed to expend my pent-up frustration before I tried to eat.

  Someone laughed.

  I froze and held my breath.

  Silence.

  “Penelope?” I lowered my fist and caught sight of her crouched in the undergrowth.

  She stood and bestowed her full metal grin on me.

  “What the heck, honey?” I said. “Please don’t sneak up on me like that. I know I’m staked out here on your path, but you need to yell or something to give me a warning. I worry about you seeing something you shouldn’t if I don’t know you’re there. Okay?”

  “Oh.” Her smile wavered briefly. “Sorry. I didn’t think about that.” She pointed to the rhododendron she’d been crouched behind. “I brought someone.”

  I cocked my head at her. “Are you introducing me to your secret friend, the shrub? I’m pretty sure we’ve already met.”

  The rhododendron snickered.

  I took a step toward the bush. Kai stood from behind it. He didn’t look any less wan than when I’d seen him last, but he was there. In two steps, I reached him and lifted him off the ground in a bear hug—a very noxious bear hug. Ugh. Reluctantly, I set him down.

  “I stink, guys,” I said. I took a few steps away and waved a hand at the campsite. “My apartment didn’t come equipped with a shower.”

  It was a relief to hear Kai let loose a small laugh. I thought my heart would burst from seeing him again so soon—and without having to persuade Mitch that I was worthy.

  “Please come in,” I said with a bow. “My home may be humble, but I’m glad to share what I have. Can I interest you in a vintage beef stew with a side of hand-washed carrots?” The green tops of the car
rots flapped as I waggled them.

  Penelope and Kai grinned and nodded.

  “Sit wherever you’d like.” I pointed to the logs I’d dragged in for seats and a table. While they settled, I poured stew into my two metal cups. I could eat out of the pot.

  “Use the handles,” I said as I passed the cups over. “It’s hot.” I handed Penelope my only spoon and gave Kai the fork. “We’ll take turns.”

  “I didn’t think you knew anyone on Vashon,” I said to Kai.

  He gave his cup of stew a sniff.

  “Art camp started this week,” Penelope said. “It’s all day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. We do arts and crafts stuff—drawing and plays and sewing and dancing. I’ve been going since I was little.”

  Kai spoke for the first time. “Penelope was talking about you.”

  “About me? At art camp?”

  Kai nodded. “I heard her tell some girls she found a man camping in the woods. The girls thought it was creepy and asked Penelope if she was afraid. Penelope told the story about the rain and the tarp. It made me wonder.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Some guy’s inept in the woods, and it has to be me, huh?”

  Penelope scraped the last bit of stew from her cup and handed me the spoon. “Kai came over to me later and asked what you looked like. That’s how I found out you’re his uncle.”

  “And now here you are,” I said with wonder.

  Kai chewed a morsel of stew tentatively, like he’d wait and see if he wanted to swallow. “Mom dropped me off at Penelope’s today for a playdate.”

  “I’m surprised your parents went for the art camp idea,” I said. Mitch and Sonya hadn’t struck me as the arts and crafts type. More the computer camp type. Or golf camp. Or young attorneys camp.

  I remembered an evening at Mitch’s when Kai was around six. Kai and I had stretched out on our stomachs on Mitch’s living room floor to work on adjacent pages of a coloring book. We hadn’t talked, but I’d loved it. The grown-ups—the other grown-ups—talked around us as if we couldn’t hear them. Sonya remarked on how different Kai was from Joel at that age. Meanwhile, Joel ran around the house with a plastic hockey stick, jumping over me and Kai, making a menace of himself. No one had remarked on that.